The books / Mead Making / chapter 6 of 21
Choosing a yeast
All chapters
- Honey, water and yeast
- Why mead goes wrong
- Never boil the must
- Honey and gravity
- The alcohol is the gravity you lost
- Choosing a yeast
- Feed it in thirds
- Sanitise everything it touches
- The cellar through the year
- Three steady readings
- Racking off the lees
- Faults and what caused them
- A stuck ferment and the restart
- Clearing, fining and the second racking
- Stabilise before you sweeten
- Dry, semi-sweet and sweet
- Bottling
- Varietal meads
- Patience is a technique
- Selling mead, and the licence
- What the cellar leaves out
Four wine yeasts do most of the world's mead, and their makers print what each will stand:
- Lalvin D47 stops at about 14 percent, brings fruity, spicy notes and is sensitive below 15 C; meadmakers keep it under 21 C.
- Lalvin 71B also stops at 14 percent, softens acidity and ferments from 15 to 30 C.
- EC-1118 goes to 18 percent between 10 and 30 C, robust, very dry and neutral.
- K1V-1116 reaches 18 percent from 10 to 35 C, with more aroma when kept cool.
A yeast that dies short of the sugar leaves a sweeter mead. One that runs too warm makes fusels, and one kept too cold for it stalls.
In this game D47 fermented above 21 C comes out hot, and D47 or 71B below 15 C sticks.